Moon Junkee

30 Poems in 30 Days

Monday, April 30, 2018

Matisse began paper cutouts. Small pieces at first. Then bigger. Then murals. So many pictures
made from pieces. Goldfish. Dancers. Portraits. Horses. So beloved, these friendly spectaculars.
Le Bateau hung upside down at MOMA for 46 days and no one said a thing until a stockbroker (imagine! a stockbroker!) noticed and told a guard and newspapers got wind and it all made a kerfuffle. But I suppose boats may go anyway but under, so perhaps it didn't matter. Anyway
after the cancer he found a new way and went on until he died at age 84. Heavy color. Impossible shapes. Bright, bright assembly. A blue nude doing yoga. So many flowers. His great paper gardens go on and on, curves and swashes gouache and glue going and going. Henri you float my boat.

From "Event" by Sylvia PlathMorning: all wrens and finches whistlingor soft doves whoo-clucking on wiresbright cardinals bounce from fencetopto branch to bloom. Each bird totesits own vowels, sounds them in sunlight.Another language to learn, all thosedialects! How they delight the air. Poor desperate Sylvia, ruined, undone.

Saturday, April 28, 2018

we'd bought cheese and wine, returned to the rented villa wondered at the light beyond
the ridge what town glowing so in darkness? a name, ached for a name, drank the wine
ate the cheese on the balcony wondered some more the brightening glow of the town
over there world's end above the gleaming surface of the too-cold-to-swim pool drank
more wine had some olives watched the town's glow grow fat climb the ridge
break into the sky entering curved like an orange moon indeed the moon breaking
the Spanish sky open taking on the night taking night by the dark bright destroyer

Thursday, April 26, 2018

she stood on the quarry's lip her back
to green water thirty feet below
the great grey bowl rising
into a summer afternoon of salty
mouth and lotioned limbs
stoney scent of sun
and oh she leaned
into it tipped
and flipped and dove
her tanning self
into the mineraled
emerald miracle
a white knife
sinking

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

plans made more plans made
generations of plans made entire
family trees of plans so many
plans but not this
one not this plan
not now or more
precisely not this
not plan

we have evidence
a picture of me
before and if you
look you can
see maybe
a plan in my eyes
making another
at that time

now (not before
when I wore
a red and black
checked flannel
shirt in that photo
because fall permits
such fashion) I recall
soap bubbles
we blew on your
birthday in the before
before how each floated
and all burst

how now I purse
my lips
into a plan
and blow
wonder in saying
so if that's a curse